Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!jln
From: jln@accuvax.nwu.edu (John Norstad)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: New WDEF Strain
Message-ID: <2095@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 13 Dec 89 19:57:55 GMT
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Reply-To: jln@accuvax.nwu.edu (John Norstad)
Organization: Northwestern Univ. Evanston, Il.
Lines: 34

The news about the WDEF virus could not be much worse.

A new strain has been discovered at several locations.  A cursory
examination reveals that it beeps when it infects a new Desktop file,
but is otherwise almost identical to the original.

Disinfectant 1.4 will not catch this new strain.  I hope to release 
yet another new version (1.5) tonight which will recognize this new strain
and hopefully any other strains which might exist, although it is 
impossible for me or anybody else to make any guarantees.

It appears that this new strain is a variant produced by the same 
miscreant who produced the original.

More bad news: I've received so many reports of WDEF infections that I have
stopped trying to keep track of all the sitings.  It's all over the US,
at least.

More bad news: I received two reports of other problems caused by WDEF.
It appears to cause 8 meg Macs to crash so often that they are unusable.
It also is completely incompatible with the "Virtual" INIT from Connectrix. 
We don't know why yet - reports of problems with this virus are coming in
faster than we can investigate them.

I've never before let my emotions creep into my "official" postings to the
public about viruses - I always thought they were largely irrelevant.  But
this time I must tell you that I'm angry, depressed, and overwhelmed.

I have a request to make - please don't write to me right now unless it is
very important.  It's almost to the point where my mail is arriving faster
than I can read it, much less think about it.  I have work to do that isn't
getting done because of it.

John Norstad          Northwestern University      jln@acns.nwu.edu